Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1887-11-22
VIOLATIONS OF THE RESTRICTION
ACT.

Arrests have been made in San Fran
cisco upon charges, the investigation of
which viii certainly throw great deal of
light upon the frauds committed in the
landing of Chinese in violation of the
terms Of the Restriction Act. The charge
is that certain inspectors of the Customs
department have distracted Cancelled GER
tifcates from the archives, and by the use
of ammonia obliterated the cancellation
marks, which have uniformity been made
with an aniline ink or pencil. The docu-
ments are then sold to the Chinese, who
dispose of them TO immigrants who in ap-
pearance so nearly FL, the calls of the GER
tiicates, that there is little or no diff
Guilty in passing the bearers of the altered
papers.
This discovery may lead to the complete
exposure of all the frauds practiced in the
landing of Chinese. Especially in the
matter of landing Chinese women
Is there urgent necessity for thorough in
vestigation. A San Francisco Journal,
which has been examining the statistics,
makes the charge that more Chinese
women have been released in the past four
months than departed from this city in the
whole interval between the adoption of
the treaty and the issue of the first certifi-
cate. In the past four months 17S women
have been landed by the habeas corpus
route on the prior residence plea. In the
interval between the adoption of the
treaty, November II, 1880, and the passage
of the Restriction Act, May 6, 1882, 159
women departed from this port"
The Assistant United States District
Attorney at San Francisco is reported to
have said in open Court on Friday last,
that seventeen Chinese women had been
landed by orders of Court on showings
made before it, where the witnesses
swore that the applicants to land had
sailed from California December 81, 1881.
by the steamer Oceanic But the steamer
the Consular and the Customs books all
agree that no Chinese women departed
from California by that vessel on that
date.
There is SO much that is loose and fraud
ulent in this whole business of landing
Chinese that the authorities cannot afford
to longer delay going to the bottom of the
matter, In order to expose the corruption
by which illegal landings are accom-
plished. The Restriction Act has been so
openly and frequently defeated, and its
provisions so fagrantly violated by means
of forgery, perjury and the chicane of
officials, that the law has little vitality left
in it. Now that Congress is about to meet
the evidences of evasion and violation
ought to be laid before that body in detail
that the loopholes in the law NAV be
stopped and such legislation had as will
make infractions of the Act extremely
hazardous and the penalties very heavy.
In this matter the law must be made de-
terrent so emphaticaIly that even the
Chinese, who manifest the supremest con-
tempt for most of the laws of this country.
will fear to violate it; will take heed of
its warnings, and venture rarely to invoke
its penalties.
There can be entertained no longer any
doubt of the existence of a Chinese ring,
formed for the purpose of fraudulently
shipping Chinese to California. Collector
Hager is credited with saying that he
knows such ring to exist Certificates
are openly sold in Chinese ports for from
$50 to $50 each, and regular brokerage
business for the manipulation of these
entry papers is carried on, notably at
Hongkong. Every broker has an agent III
San Francisco, and they are all in COM
munication with and receive aid from the
ring"
The men, Boyd and Ciprico, who have
Just been arrested in San Francisco. are
charged with being Chinese doodle"
brokers of this class, and with
regularly trading in return certificates.
The fact that they are Government en-
ployes will make their crime, if proven.
the more heinous, since they abused the
trust reposed in them as customs officers.
and at the same time violated the seventh
section of the Restriction Act, which pro-
vides a penalty of fine and imprisonment
an the penitentiary for falsely altering a
certificate or substituting one name for
another in such document.
The proposition made by San Fran
cisco contemporary to ask Congress to put
a limit upon the period within which re-
turn certificates may be used will 90 a
long way toward checking the trade in
them. but it will not be enough to wholly
prevent it. An additional and still more
satisfactory amendment is proposed by the
Ran francisco Alta, that the certificates be
simply numbered, and contain no descrip-
ton Cd the party to whom issued. But the
duplicate or stub retained by the customs
officers should contain the personal descrip-
ton. This would prevent brokers to
great extent from fitfSng immigrants TO
certificates. A further means Of checking
fraud, We think, would be found in reouir-
ing Photographic Likeness of every China
man taking out certificate to be affixed
to the retained stub. On the presentation
OF the certificate on return, the portrait
would aid the officers in identifying the
holder as the person described.
MR.. coMsr0CK's MISTAKE.